Tuesday, July 25, 2017

New Kids In Town - February, 1962

Saturday
morning dawned cold and overcast, just like most early February
mornings in the Eifel Mountains. Gino Davis had joined the group and
was happily leading the way down the hill and past the Air Police
guardhouse as we walked along the two lane access road toward the
German Bus Stop out on highway B-51. Leonard, who organized the trip along with Mike Ammon, slipped to the rear of the group and let Gino lead the way. Gino was wearing white socks
with black pants and a day-glow green sweater. He proudly announced
to the world the Americans were coming.

The
bus stop was almost half a mile walk from the gate at Bitburg Air Base and by the time we got there I
was almost cold enough to abandon the trip. No, not really, I was excited about what
lay ahead. Soon one of the big, lumbering yellow
Mercedes diesel buses from the Deutsche Bundespost pulled off the busy highway into our bus stop. After someone, I don't know who,
communicated to the driver we wanted to go to the Trier train
station, we all dug out the right combination of Deutschmarks, and
deposited them in the coin box.

"Almost
like home" I thought as I fingered the Marks, about the
same size and weight as a quarter. Then I looked up at the
passengers, most of the men wearing fedora hats, and many of the
older women with "babushka" type scarves, all staring at
our group boarding the bus and thought, "Oh, no, no it isn't!"

It was
apparent we were as much a novelty tocurious passengers as they were to us. They
saw Americans all the time, some of them even worked on base or in
the housing area, but usually only one or two "Amis" would
get on the bus at once, and not all carrying duffel bags. We
were being whispered about as we lurched toward the rear of the bus,
looking for empty seats. There were eight of us, including Hank, one
of my friends from the guidance shop, and some others I didn't really
know. We ended up scattered around the bus, somehow concerned we
would get separated and not make the journey to Luxembourg, wherever
that was.

The
bus stopped at several more villages on the sixteen-mile trip through
the wooded countryside, picking up occasional riders. The ride down
the hill overlooking the Mosel Valley and the city of Trier was one
I'll always remember. The beauty of the German countryside never
fails to impress me. We crossed over the Mosel River and soon swung
into the open-air bus station, filled with buses and people. When the bus came to a halt in the busy bus terminal in Trier, everyone else got off, so we did, too.Someone had a city map of Trier, I think
it was Leonard's, and we made a command decision to walk through the
Markt Platz and head toward Germany's oldest building, the Roman
"Black Gate," the Porta Nigra. We stood at the Porta Nigra
and several of us took photos like any tourist. I didn't have a camera, and most of
the others couldn't afford color film. A lot of GI photos of Europe back then were shot in black and white.

Porta Nigra, Trier, Germany

We referred to the priceless map and struck off
in what we thought was the direction of the train station. At first
it was fun, goofing along and making mental notes about all of our
observations of German civilization. It was apparent we weren't going to find any train station when we were
almost out of town. Leonard stopped a passerby, who didn't speak
English, but by pointing at the map and making simple hand gestures
we gathered we had gone the wrong way from the Porta Nigra. We
trudged the long walk back to the massive stonework and turned left,
walking down a beautiful, tree lined boulevard. By the time we got
to another bus station located just this side of the train station,
we were no longer kidding around about being lost. One of the buses
coming out of the train station had Bitburg lit up as a destination.
It may have been the same bus we had ridden into town.

We
stood in the huge, tile-floor train station entrance and tried to figure
out where to get train information and buy tickets. Leonard and Mike
were the ones who knew what they wanted, so while we waited alongside
the ticket window, the young clerk, who spoke broken English,
collected money from an assortment of hands and passed back eight,
small train tickets. We
looked at the tickets as if they were a joke. The train tickets were
about the size of an American movie ticket, but made out of thick
cardboard, like being cut out of a cardboard box. It was green with
a red strip through it. I thought it would make a great souvenir
someday.

"I'm
famished!", exclaimed Gino, "Let's get something to eat
before we go out to the platform. We have twenty minutes before the
train comes."

We
followed Gino into the train station's tile-walled restaurant and
ended up all at the same table, pulling empty chairs from nearby
tables. We got some strange looks, apparently we were out of order. Everything on the menu looked
expensive. My first lesson in not eating at train stations.

Gino
said to the standoffish waiter, "I'll have the Tagesuppe"

The rest of us ordered open face sandwiches, and of course, draught
beer. When we asked Gino what "Tagesuppe" was, he informed
us he had a bowl of it before and thought it was delicious. When the
waiter brought Gino a soup bowl with what appeared to be broth with a
raw egg floating in it, we thought his eyes were stuck open.

"Entshuldigung…,"
Gino said to the waiter, "What is this?"

The
waiter never blinked as he turned and said, "That is the “soup
of the day,” just as you ordered."

No
one said a word as Gino stared at soup bowl, then slowly picked up
his spoon, then repeatedly bashed the hell out of the egg.

Our
open-faced sandwiches and beer were served and we were getting back
into the spirit of our adventure when, needless to say, someone
noticed we had a minute to catch the train. We rushed en masse to the
pedestrian tunnel that led to the platform to catch our train. It
took two minutes to get to the loading platform, and we watched as
our train slowly pulled out of the station in front of us.

"Now
what?," I asked, "Should we go back to the ticket seller or
can we just get on the next train?"

"Let's
make sure," said Leonard, "Let's go back and check to be
safe."

The
ticket agent was less than pleased with us. We were taking up space
in his line and he really didn't like the extra aggravation we were
causing. He had to go and find the Bahnhof Meister, a figure who
turned out to be as imposing as his title.

The
Bahnhof Meister was a big, barrel chested man in his early fifties.
He wore a full, dark blue dress uniform, complete with a red leather
belt across his tunic and an imposing, official looking hat that
might have been worn by an old Field Marshall. He was an imposing
figure with absolutely no sense of humor.

He
had to sign each one of our tickets on the back to show they were
still valid. There wasn't enough room on the tickets to write with
much flair. He gruffly spoke to us, without a single indication we
were all from the same planet. He turned and pointed at the train
board, showing us when and where the next train to Luxembourg would
arrive. We had about twenty minutes and decided not to screw up
again. We walked up to the platform and plopped our bags down and
waited.

In
exactly nineteen and a half minutes, a passenger train quietly pulled
in on the track behind us. We turned around and watched as people
boarded, and within a minute it was underway, heading out of the
station. There were no indications of any train any where near our
track.

The
Bahnhof Meister soon strode out to the platform outside his office
and bellowed in German loud enough to be heard all the way back in
Bitburg. His face was as red as his belt. We knew what he was
saying even though we didn't speak a word of German. We had missed
the train yet again! We were waiting by the wrong track and we hadn't
understood the blaring loudspeaker. We had just stood there like
fence posts while the loudspeakers tried to tell us the train was
behind us! We were marched once again into his tiny office. He made
us sit down, not letting any one of us out of his sight. He had
finally filled in every open space on the back of the tickets, and he
wasn't taking any chances he'd have to issue new tickets. It was
like writing your telephone number on a matchbook match after someone
else had already written theirs. He was silent as he rocked back and
forth in his chair, watching the clock on the wall. It was not a
rocking chair. Every once in a while he would scowl at us, then turn
back and look at the clock.

Finally,
he stood up and said, "Los!" and strode out of the office.
We followed along as he marched to the platform. The train pulled in
and stopped with a coach door inches from our feet. The Bahnhof
Meister stood stiffly and waited while we boarded the train. The
train was slowly rolling before he turned on his heel and strode back
into his office.

Leonard,
leaning back to look out the coach window said, "Want to bet
he's headed for a schnapps?"

The
train we boarded was headed from Copenhagen to Paris. Like the bus
ride earlier, there weren't many empty seats. Most of the sofa-style,
leather covered seats had people sprawled out, scattered around the
car. The compartments were just like in the movies, except not as
plush. These were the "B" coaches and they were mostly
filled. Hank and I found a couple of seats together, but I think
Leonard was carefully looking for a good-looking seating partner. I
decided that was only in the movies, too, looking at the mostly
tired, unhappy looking travelers who mostly didn't even bother to
look up.

Soon
after leaving Trier, the train crossed over the Mosel and headed
southwest toward Wasserbillig, just over the Luxembourg border. We
stopped not ten minutes out of Trier while the German locomotive
dropped off and was replaced by a Luxembourg diesel. After a few
moments we were under way again, and before we could really get
settled in, we were pulling into the main train station in the city
of Luxembourg. The two cities are less than thirty miles apart.

Surprise!
You needed your ticket to get off the train! They don't do this in
the movies! Luckily we all scrounged up our mutilated tickets and
turned them over to the bemused Luxembourg agents who soon start
chatting and laughing among themselves. I wondered what the Bahnhof
Meister wrote in that small space.